CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Live From New York, Permission to Laugh

On the season opener of NBC's ''Saturday Night Live'' this weekend, the funniest routine was also the riskiest. During the ''Weekend Update'' segment, Darell Hammond impersonated the Rev. Jesse Jackson explaining how he was invited to negotiate with leaders of the Taliban. ''I had a hang-up call on my machine, so I star-sixty-nined,'' he said.

Mr. Hammond (best known for his wickedly funny Bill Clinton routines) gently mocked Mr. Jackson's mannerisms while the writing took a swipe at how he so often finds himself in the middle of touchy situations. His shoulders shrugging, his face impassive, his voice measured, the fictional Jackson explained what happened next. ''I pushed the redial button by mistake,'' he said. ''I accidentally got the Taliban'' a second time. Eventually the Taliban tell him to stop calling.

It was the only truly political moment in a show that started with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani offering a serious, forward-looking tribute to New York, and went on to do safe satires of pop culture. But it was a sign of the toe-in-the-water approach to topical humor that comedy shows are taking. Last week Jay Leno started telling Osama bin Laden jokes, based on the ''Springtime for Hitler'' model that says it's O.K. to make fun of the bad guy. They weren't funny jokes, but he's so rarely funny that's not surprising.

Sooner than most pundits would have guessed, there are signs, including movie box-office receipts, that entertainment along with the culture at large is starting to turn a corner. That there was an antiwar protest in Washington on Saturday, the same day as the ''S.N.L.'' premiere, suggests that the stunned, single-minded national mood is beginning to dissolve, at least around the edges.

''Saturday Night Live'' began as most late-night shows have in the past two weeks, taking a cue from David Letterman's emotionally shaken, reflective return to show business, addressing the tragedy rather than avoiding it. But there was a future-oriented attitude to ''S.N.L.'' that was different from the mournful tone of shows that had returned earlier. Mr. Giuliani, surrounded by police officers and firefighters, said: ''We will not yield to terrorism. We will not let our decisions be made out of fear.''

Then Paul Simon, standing near a large American flag, sang ''The Boxer.'' Although the song is about someone determined to survive in New York, it offers a harsh vision of the city, another sign of a gradual shift in tone. In last week's all-star tribute Mr. Simon sang the more soothing ''Bridge Over Troubled Water.''

After the song, Mr. Giuliani told the producer of ''Saturday Night Live,'' Lorne Michaels, that it was important for his show to go on, and Mr. Michaels asked, ''Can we be funny?''

''Why start now?'' the mayor deadpanned. He got the first laugh, as if giving permission for everyone to go ahead.

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That exchange was replayed on news programs the next day, including ABC's political talk show ''This Week,'' with Sam Donaldson asking if we really can laugh now. The replays bookended the advance publicity about what ''S.N.L.'' might do, including a report on CNN anticipating it. Before and after, talking about laughter was another way of reassuring the audience that it was all right to make jokes.

Gauging the kinds of jokes the country is ready for is tougher, though, especially for ''S.N.L.'' Its strength lately has been political humor, including dumb-George jokes about the president. ''We can't do Bush jokes, he's smart now,'' Mr. Leno cracked last week. Comedy about the president has remained off-limits, and thankfully no one has even tried to make light of the tragedy itself.

But on the ''Tonight'' show Mr. Leno found a workable strategy with bin Laden jokes. Lame though they were, they had a we-can-beat-him attitude that spoke to the national mood. One night Mr. Leno showed a film, purportedly of Mr. bin Laden leaving Afghanistan; it was tape of a man in a turban riding an ostrich, looking helpless as he fled.

''S.N.L.'' used a similar approach on ''Weekend Update'' when Jimmy Fallon showed a photograph of a restaurant called Osama's Place, whose owner said its name had nothing to do with Mr. bin Laden. ''He had a harder time explaining why his other restaurant is named 'Hitler's Chicken,' '' Mr. Fallon said. Another bin Laden joke was detached from politics. Mr. Fallon said the Bush administration was looking for Mr. bin Laden in remote, unpopulated places, so it searched every theater playing Mariah Carey's movie ''Glitter.''

Most of the show leaned on that kind of pop-culture mockery without allusions to the terrorist attacks. It returned to one of its most popular sketches, celebrity ''Jeopardy,'' with Saturday's guest host, Reese Witherspoon, as Anne Heche, speaking her secret language from outer space. It wasn't the best or worst show ever, and Ms. Witherspoon's comic flair and gameness helped lift it. Still, the show had a slightly tentative feel, a sense that doing it at all was the real accomplishment.

Though the networks have generally been sensitive to the public mood, they haven't been beyond exploiting the patriotic fervor. The only offensive thing on ''S.N.L.'' is something it shares with every other show on its network, whose logo is perpetually in the corner of the screen. The NBC peacock's feathers are now colored like the Stars and Stripes, the ultimate trivialization.

There is nothing trivial about political satire, though, no matter how soon it arrives. After all, Charlie Chaplin's Hitler-mocking film, ''The Great Dictator,'' appeared in 1940, and in our accelerated information age, cultural influences spread even faster. The satiric online magazine The Onion has already made some pointed political jokes about President Bush and his father, and we know how quickly stories move from the Internet into print and television.